The Lie

Synopsis

Marlowe was stabbed to death on May 30th, 1593 in the house of Eleanor Bull at Deptford Strand, two miles from London. Ingram Frizer admitted the killing, but the coroner, and the court, found it to be in self-defence, and Frizer was released after only two weeks in prison. Was Marlowe really murdered that night in Deptford? Or was he smuggled out of the country, and his death feigned so that he would not implicate the great and powerful of Elizabethan England?

Our Review:

10 September 2001

The 'reckoning,' according to the English Dictionary, may be interpreted as a 'settling of accounts'. Quite in what manner the account of Christopher Marlowe's life was settled has remained unclear for centuries, but Tony Haygarth's crackling new play, The Lie, offers some potential clues.

The official line was that arguments in a Deptford tavern over the reckoning, or bill, after a night's supping provoked Marlowe's stabbing. However, Haygarth casts doubt on that from the opening scene, set in a coroner's dank chamber. The assistant points to 'oddities and rare chances' in the witness testimony, although his master's dark robe and glowering beard remain impassive.

The manipulations and machinations of court in Elizabethan times can still baffle even the keenest historian. Haygarth's authentic and approachable use of language, and staging, direct us to the poetic playwright being suspected of playing a 'dangerous double game'. Stephen Fewell, as Marlowe, handles th...

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